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Monday, 26 August 2013

Grim Hammers

Here are a couple more minis I've painted from the Hobbit range. Grim Hammers are an elite dwarven unit and they look... grim. Their expressionless masks and heavy armor with only beards visible create this mean look. The miniatures are really well cast and putting them together was fairly easy, the only small problem being that each of the sets of arms that are available in the box is matched to a particular miniature so it took some time to figure out which goes where.

The dwarf heroes were, as always, a pure joy to paint. However, putting them together was a bit problematic. They're both finecast models so some problems were bound to occur. The main issue I had with Thrain (the one in red armor) was that there was simply no way in which his cape would fit the body. I needed to cut away large part of it and than work a lot with GS to make up for that after it was successfully glued. Thror was pretty much OK except for the sword. When I unpacked the mini the sword was wrapped around his wrist like a snake. It took a lot of time to bend it back to a shape that resembled a sword and even then I was unable to fix it to a perfectly straight position. I gave up after some time as bending it back and forth would result in damage beyond repair.

The main challenge in painting Thrain was that red is a dominant color there. The clothes were easy to work with but painting a red armor was a new experience for me. I followed the codex paintjob, only used slightly darker shades. Also, I managed to paint eyes on him, which are not there in the picture in GW's online store.

While working on Thror's armor, I wanted to try to achieve a result similar to one I got for Jamie Lannister. I used Andrea Gold set and I think it worked well. What I really like about it is the rich, saturated color. Yellow ink is essential to get it. I hardly ever use it but here it really nicely added depth and richness to the armor.